Time Capsule

Background

This may be a weird one but this is another idea that popped into my head that I had to just get out of my system. As usual I went a tad overboard but I guess that’s what I do.

First of all, I am well aware that the opinion of a celebrity doesn’t matter ANY more than the average citizen’s as we all have the same capacity to discern (or ignore) the facts in front of us. However, since celebrities are given so much media attention, their opinions do have some influence on the public. So for this reason, and my own political and nerdy curiousity I’ve put together a graphical record of who is on which side of the upcoming, historic vote for the next president of the U.S. But again … while I would love to hear debates between Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood or Tony Bennett and James Woods on why they support different candidates this election, the bottom line is that their celebrity status doesn’t make their presidential endorsements any more significant than mine or any other American citizen’s.

Before stating the obvious that the Trump-supporting group is visibly smaller that the Hillary-supporting group, keep in mind that in the current political and cultural climate in America it is FAR easier and more “culturally-acceptable” to support Hillary (because you know “RACISTS! SEXIST!” yadda yadda). Sadly what’s worse, showing support for Trump can have a very negative impact on a celebrity’s career (example). Given these facts, each person on the Trump side here has (IMHO) 10 times the guts of anyone supporting Hillary and they have my sincere thanks and respect.

On the topic of support numbers I think the following two quotes are quite fitting:

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”– Mark Twain

“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”– Samuel Adams

Graphics

Final Thoughts

Even though I know Hollywood skews to the left I have to admit it is painful to see some of my favorite actors being so aggresively outspoken on this election given the fact that this isn’t “just another left vs right election” and that the stakes are so high. It’s going to take some time for me to watch any of them in a movie anytime soon – especially after watching stuff like this ridiculous celebrity-stuffed anti-Trump ad:

Fortunately, some brilliant folks made a rebuttal video that at least helped me take the edge off a bit after watching the above:

In any case … that’s all for now. I just wanted to create a visual document showing who was on which side of the election … for whichever way it goes.

Few disclaimers on graphics:

Both lists here are likely far from complete. I’m sure there are plenty of musicians, actors and other celebrities not represented here who consider themselves on one side or the other. These lists, however, are just pulled from links like this that outline celebrities who have been outspoken about their political leaning this election.

To keep the list more “celebrity” focused I left out people from news organization, nightly “talk shows” and the world of politics.

If anyone notices any major names missing, or if anyone changes sides between now and the election let me know and maybe I’ll update the graphics. But being ~3 weeks out now I don’t think much of that will happen.

Ok so the silly graphic I made for this post is not entirely accurate. Adobe Flash did not die … but for all intents and purposes it did back in 2010 when Steve Jobs wrote his infamous letter about it. While Adobe made some smart moves since then to stay in the game it definitely was somewhat forced to move on from being the primary, most popular platform for creating slick animation and interactive experiences on the web.

While I do enjoy the new frontiers of design and development my job and hobbies involve that, sadly, have little to nothing to do with Flash, I have to say it’s a lot more work to produce stuff as shiny and fun w/the new, non-Flash tools we use today. That may just be a reflection of my skill/experience levels not being what they should be … but I also think it’s just a fact that nothing has come around yet that allows designers and animators the ability to create stuff as quickly, as creative and as polished than Adobe Flash did.

Much of my early career invovled a lot of Flash work but as the years go by it becomes harder to keep track of them – let alone keep them online somewhere where eveyone can still access them since no Apple phones/tablets can view them anymore.

Anyhow … I know this whole topic is years old but recently I decided I would create some screencast movies of some of them for safe(r) keeping and to provide a more convenient way to share them w/a world that has for the most part moved on from the “Flash Plugin” days. Anyhow … see below for the Flash things I’ve archived so far. I may/may not add to the list. If you’re bored feel free to play one or two of the below … make sure to click the HD and fullscreen buttons! 🙂

My Portfolio: 1998-2008

What’s It Going to Be 2008

What’s It Going to Be 2006

Baby Announcement (Lincoln)

Super Golf

Guitar Chord Tutor

Think or Swim (Wheel of Fortune)

A Day to Remember

My 1999 Website (so old and cheesy!)

I’m a bit late but here’s another time capsule post where I try to record the best things I discovered during the past year. Everything here is great but the list does go in order of my most favorite things (top) to general fondness (bottom).

I have to admit that I kinda made fun of the BodyBeast weight lifting program when I first heard about it – partially because I was such a loyal Tony Horton fan and because I just didn’t get the whole weight lifting thing. However after taking a look at it and weight-lifting in generalt I was really curious to try it out and now I’m hooked! While I’m still a Tony Horton fan and still don’t have weight lifting thing totally figured out yet I can say that I’m now a huge fan of this program and Sagi Kalev (the series creator). I’ve been doing the program for 6 days a week for the last 34 weeks or so.Outside my general OCD tendencies I’m not sure what attracts me to the program other than being an interesting/fresh way to stay fit and have a more tangible goal beyond staying “generally fit”. However this line from a Henry Rollins quote does hit on something at play here: “… I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.” I love that quote!

Scooby is a cool weight-lifting dude from California who’s been around a while. I stumbled on to his very helpful website and always entertaining youtube channel this year as I was learning more about weight lifting. He freely gives out great, no-nonsense, non-commercial advice, workout programs, recipes and more to anyone curious about weight lifting and has tons of helpful articles that cover real-world questions on the topic. It’s just a bonus that he’s a fellow geek with computers and video equipment. Oh – he also built his own plane in his garage as a side project … he’s an engineer. Great guy.

How work gets done “at the office” these days has evolved in so many ways over the past decade – the giant game-changer being that 1 out of every 5 Americans now work from home. Sadly though most companies methods of conducting business haven’t caught up with the times. For me, and apparently plenty of other folk (Link, Link, Link, Link …), the idea of working out of your email inbox is just plain crazy. Podio is one of a few “cloud” services out there that solve this problem by letting you create your own online “workspace” where all your work activity (conversations, links, files etc) can be connected and organized in a manner that makes way more sense, reduces email and gives your workflow a giant boost of efficiency. It’s a tough sell for companies who’ve lived in an email client for the past 2 decades but I personally use it for everything now. For the record I loved Podio beforeCitrix acquired it … but that acquisition definitely gave it a nice jolt of recognition and longevity. Podio has a really great unlimited-time free version for anyone curious to try it out.

Plex is a really slick app that lets me enjoy movies, TV and online video library no matter what device I’m using – from iPhone to iPad to Xbox to laptop to computer. It’s a media center server and client solution that is designed with features actual real-world people would want – my favorite being that it BOOKMARKS the TV and MOVIES you’re watching and remembers your position on whatever device you come back to keep watching it on! Another great feature is the ability to save a YouTube or Vimeo video to a “queue” where you can watch it later from your couch – it’s like Pocket for videos! Plex is easily one of my top 3 most-frequently-used apps on iPad.

In case you didn’t know Google lets you upload up to 25,000 music files (mp3, etc) to the cloud (i.e. Google Play) for free. Melodies is an app for iPhone lets you stream these songs over 3G or WiFi for free. It even, best feature, lets you save albums for offline playback if you want. Worth way more than $.99. Love it!

For web developers and designers the creation and management of “icon” images files can be a huge pain – especially since computer and mobile devices these days all use difference sizes and resolutions. I was the last guy to hear about “Icon Fonts” I’m sure but the idea is that if you use an font instead of images for your web/app icons you can save yourself a ton of Photoshop time. That is cool enough by itself but the site/server Fontello actually lets you create your own custom icon fonts online and download for free. Wicked awesome. I’ll never start a new app using image icons again.

I already posted about this but completing it was definitely an achievement I’m proud of since it was so hard and since finishing any kind of video game these days (as a Dad, a workaholic and fitness nut) is quite a challenging (and rare) feat. I was fascinated by Dark Soul’s ruthlessly high difficulty level and it’s refusal to “coddle” the player with tutorials and “easy mode” options. It was terrifying and exciting at the same time. Can’t wait for the sequel.

This somewhat relates to my love of Podio (above) but I actually stumbled on it a bit after coming to the same conclusions on my own – w/out of course the clarity and insight Inbox Zero contains. So Inbox Zero, as I understand/interpret it, is more of a philosophy/mentality than some specific process or tool – the essence of it is the simple, common-sense notion that your email system is way more useful and your mind is much more efficient when you have a system that keeps your inbox clear. Tactically this simply means when an email comes in you have a list of options to apply to it – but either way it’s going to get removed from your inbox and filed away as a: Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer or Do item. Sounds super nerdy maybe but late in the year I actually deleted all my email folders and now simply drag everything to a “Processed” subfolder after “processing” each msg for whatever action necessary – so all my email accounts have an empty Inbox at the end of every day. Anyhow – this Inbox Zero thing has been around a while and the guy behind it, Merlin Mann, is a cool dude IMO and is my kind of people – his original talk on Inbox Zero was at a Google event a while back and he was recently interviewed in one of the online magazines I follow.

I’m not big on following celebrities but this past year I found out that Alec Baldwin has his own podcast – and it’s really an interesting and entertaining show! The show doesn’t have new episodes as often as I’d like, but the archives have some really great guests like Michael Douglas and Billy Joel.

Merlin Mann (mentioned above) does a few different podcasts – this one is my favorite. Sometimes they talk about productivity and inbox-zero type stuff… and other times (quite often) they talk about pretty much anything else – but it’s usually always entertaining whatever he and his co-host end up talking about.

A 30-something dude who works for a gaming news company and currently building his online presence via YouTube and Twitter. For multiple reasons Greg is my kind of people and reminds me that there are normal but interesting people still out in the world that I’d be friends with if they lived in my area – sadly he lives in California. But I keep up with his various YouTube shows and updates at IGN pretty regularly. To be honest though, Greg’s colleague Colin is a fascinating dude as well – I’d have trouble picking a favorite between the two of them because besides his scary amount of knowledge on American history and pretty much every other topic you could think of Colin is a also huge 311 fan just like me.

Great iOS app that puts a whole new spin on learning the Japanese language. Sadly there’s a limit to what I can learn with the amount of free time/focus I can carve out of my schedule but it’s still a really cool app. Anyone interested in learning a little Japanese (both hearing, reading and writing it) should check it out.

This is a site that has a plethora of interesting editorial articles by various authors on pretty much every topic. Honestly 84% of them are over my head or not covering topics I’m concerned or educated about – but the ones on Design and other topics are always interesting and though provoking. Editorial sites are a dime a dozen these days but Medium seems to have a consistent high level of writing quality and visual polish that stands out (IMO).

I rarely get around to checking up on things with Flipboard lately but when I do want to catch up on all the latest news from my various social circles (Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds etc) using the Flipboard app on iPad or iPhone is way easier than using multiple apps for each social network! Thanks to Donnie for reminding me about this app.

Back in 2011 I thought I would start creating quarterly (?) posts that contained a list of the coolest, most-interesting stuff I’d come across in the past few months as a sort of time capsule reference. But since my last (and only) time capsule post was in 2011 I guess this might turn into a yearly thing! In any case … here is my list of some of my favorite things I discovered and enjoyed in 2011:

Time Capsule 20110905

#fitness#health#adventure

Doing workouts over my lunch break:This was an awesome suggestion Holly had early in the year and has been a huge boost to my dedication/motivation with fitness. It also freed up more of my evenings to do other stuff!Shakeology (link):I’m on bag 3 (or 4) of this stuff – which means I’ve been drinking it for my breakfast for 5+ months now. It is no doubt the healthiest meal of my day and aside from the manufacturer fussing a tad w/the flavor I still love it and look forward to it every day.Bear Grylls (link):This dude is my new hero. Firstly I know there is some controversy about him being a fake, or not hardcore enough – but after watching 4 of the 7 seasons of his “Man vs. Wild” show on the Discovery channel and reading about his climb of Mt. Everest at age 23 I have no doubt at all that he is the real deal and a true stand up guy. And honestly after watching some of the other survival shows, I have to say Bear’s has the best mix of education, adventure and entertainment. Love you, Bear!

#technology#development#code

Sublime Text 2 (link):I’ve always thought people who geeked out about their favorite code editors were a bit odd … but I now have to join that club because this app truly does make code editing fun and I am super ga-ga over it. Too many cool things about it to mention but here’s a good starting point if you’re curious.Chrome DevTools Autosave (link):This thing blew my mind. Chrome’s Developer tools are already great out of the box but with this addon/setup things you tinker with can be saved in real-time which, once you get hang of it, can start saving a ton of dev time! Definitely one of top favorite things I found/started using this year.Github Gists (link):I’m still fairly new to Github but I discovered Github “Gists” earlier this year and can now say I have finally found the best (IMHO) place to store, manage, share and discover code snippets. I’ve already got 20 some snippets of my own the integration with Sublime Text 2 is insanely awesome. Oh and it’s free.Alfred App (link):This is a relatively new thing on my list but so far I really like using it … just another way to use the mouse a bit less which is always good!Online/social code editors:Sites like jsbin and jsfiddle are super cool and have often come in quite handy!Dirtymarkup.com (link):I know there are other tools out there like this but in a pinch this site is great for html, js or css optimization/error checking.

I do a fairly good job saving bookmarks with Delicious every time I find something online I find interesting, helpful etc – but I thought it might be helpful (for myself) to occasionally create a post that mentions the latest few things I’ve come across in some kind of “time capsule” format so I can look back and see some kind of history/archival of these things outside my bookmarks. As usual, few disclaimers up front:

Disclaimers

For this first post it’s hard for me to not go back 6-12 months to mention things I think are much more impressive – but I’m going to resist that urge and just post things from here on out (starting with last week).

These posts may be weekly, monthly or even less frequent – no idea yet… we’ll see I guess.

The variety of items mentioned in these posts will likely be all over the place – so if I mention “solving world hunger” next to “awesome new iPhone accessory” please don’t assume I give them both equal weight!

In any case – here’s the list of things for this time capsule:

Time Capsule 20110905

This is definitely the “big” item for this time capsule. Naturally it’s a bit embarassing that I’m only finding out about this just now (since it’s ~10 years old) – but I still am finding it fascinating. As late as I am to the party, I don’t feel too bad because:

This is one of the more famous iPad apps (for certain groups) that falls into the productivity category. This one has the (unofficial) backing of David Allen (author of book above) so naturally I’m interested in learning and/or adopting this app into my work/life… another – time will tell item.

For all those out there who swear by the “rival” app “Things“, I’ve researched both (and personally think Things looks cooler) but from what I can tell Omnifocus has a bit more GTD engrained than Things does (they even wrote up a whitepaper about it) so I’m going w/that for now.

I’ve been using Autodesk’s Sketchbook on iPhone/iPad for a long time now but a couple weeks ago I found out about this app because it was the first (AFAIK) to include “hi res” painting at 1408×1920 – which about doubles what all other iPhone/iPad painting apps have achieved to-date. The app also has some other features I’ve wanted in Sketchbook like paint blending, and more interesting brush types. It’s a different style of painting so it’s going to take a bit to get used to it. I’ve been experimenting with this app over the past couple weeks and will (hopefully) have something to show from it soon.

I, like many others, am addicted to fonts so naturally I bookmarked this link as soon as I saw it. I’m not sure who actually enforces legal/illegal font usage online but apparently these are all free for online use if you’re a stickler for that kind of thing.